After 22 years, I wanna complete Time Bandit, and while doing so, I'm trying to compile a somewhat complete Walkthrough. Of course it ought to include all the riddles, as far as possible. Currently I'm stuck with the tar pit in "Ghost Town", 4D, where you have to walk over to the box and enter the 9-letter password. I could ignore that and finish the level, but that would not be good for my walkthrough (and I'll probably miss out on an artifact, I guess).

The letters available are:

AEECHRNTN

I wrote a little program to generate all possible combinations, and to my horror, there are more than 123'000. I created a text file with all the combinations, but only scrolling through them in a text editor takes ages.

Any ideas? If anyone wants the text file for doing anything with it (some kind of dictionary search comes to mind), I'll be happy to zip and mail it to you.

I develop a free Word (for Windows) add-in that's available for Word 2007 upwards. It's a fix-it toolbox that will allow power Word users to fix document errors. You can find it at: http://www.mikestoolbox.co.uk

However, I just replayed the whole "Ghost Town" from scratch in a new game, and indeed, I got again another batch of letters:

RORIEZERT

So, apparently, there isn't just one solution. With every fresh game, a random word from some internal list seems to be selected (just as the combination to the vault is generated anew with every new game).

Therefore I'll just start collecting values and solutions. While you guys can torture your brains over RORIEZERT, I'll go and try out ENCHANTER. Thank god for emulators and their memory snapshot function...

And it also seems to confirm that the US spelling of TERRORIZE is the other word.

Maybe use STEEM Debug to save off the first 1Meg of memory to a file and search for both words (the anagram and the correct spelling) - there could just be a table of entries stored in memory which contains all the possible words?

I develop a free Word (for Windows) add-in that's available for Word 2007 upwards. It's a fix-it toolbox that will allow power Word users to fix document errors. You can find it at: http://www.mikestoolbox.co.uk

Thanks for all your replys. First of all, "ENCHANTER" and "TERRORIZE" are correct. I wonder how many more words there are? And thanks for the hint to that website. The correct word leads to an artifact, an old golden watch.

I have now "Ghost Town" complete in my Walkthrough, and also completed the infamous "Excalibur" by blowing up the Klingon ship. However, there are still a few things left undone there, that I don't understand / know about:

- Some people wrote of "lightning bolts" they used somewhere. I didn't come across any... where are they? And what are they good for?- What about the unhelpful computer on Starbase-4?- What about the long-range transport coordinates for the teleporter or Starbase-4? Where can I get them?- Fixing the firing pin: When one walks to the workbench at the back of the Excalibur and tries to fix the pin by entering "USE WIRE", a message appears that only a genius would know into which of the 999 holes to put the wire. Which one is it? And what happens then, since the pin can be aquired from the crate on Starbase-4 anyway?

BTW, for those who didn't realize it, the Klingon ship can only be destroyed on 4D. In previous levels, they "perform a spectacular evasive roll".

I develop a free Word (for Windows) add-in that's available for Word 2007 upwards. It's a fix-it toolbox that will allow power Word users to fix document errors. You can find it at: http://www.mikestoolbox.co.uk

For whom who don't know me, I reverse engineered some games. Time Bandit is one of them.I've made a Time Bandit editor based on the ST version. It's not released for public now, but will be in the futur of course.

I develop a free Word (for Windows) add-in that's available for Word 2007 upwards. It's a fix-it toolbox that will allow power Word users to fix document errors. You can find it at: http://www.mikestoolbox.co.uk

Of course I know about your editor, and I'd LOVE to use it to unravel each and every last secret of Time Bandit, in order to make sure my Walkthrough Guide will be complete.

However, as you mentioned, there's no download yet... Any chance I can get my hand on it? I'd also be happy to give you feedback about it. I'm a software engineer for a living myself, so I more or less know what kind of feedback actually helps (I hope).

Anyway keep up the good work!

Regards,Marcel

PS: Just completed the egyptian ones, and "Darkside Dare"... How the hell can anyone complete "Darkside Dare" without a cheat?? That map is pure masochism!

muguk wrote:There's a home on the Atari Forum Wiki for your walkthrough when it's ready

That's a good idea. I'll have a look at that Wiki. The question is, should I write a Wiki topic, or just post/attach a text file, which is easier to download and use offline? And the textfile could also be posted to gamefaqs.com, just for backup purposes.

I develop a free Word (for Windows) add-in that's available for Word 2007 upwards. It's a fix-it toolbox that will allow power Word users to fix document errors. You can find it at: http://www.mikestoolbox.co.uk

marcelschoen wrote:Of course I know about your editor, and I'd LOVE to use it to unravel each and every last secret of Time Bandit, in order to make sure my Walkthrough Guide will be complete.

However, as you mentioned, there's no download yet... Any chance I can get my hand on it? I'd also be happy to give you feedback about it. I'm a software engineer for a living myself, so I more or less know what kind of feedback actually helps (I hope).

I PM you the tool. You'll need .NET Framework 3.0 (at least).

I don't work on it right now (finishing alpha-testing the Colonial Conquest remake), so some things may seem unfinished.

There isn't any documentation coming with it, but if you use it to browse the levels and scripts, it must be enough (but still a little difficult i think). However, if you have any questions, you can ask here or at my forum, as you want.

By the way, if you need some kind of features to help you writing your walkthrough (map snapshots, more infos, ...), i could implement it quickly.

Edit: Even if your feedbacks are welcome, i will not be able to implement your suggestions now. Concerning bugs, i'll look at them.

I'd be extremely interested in a copy, too. I played version 2.0 back in the 80s and early 90s, until my ST finally died. I've only just discovered emulation, and I played v 2.1 on my laptop last night (being able to save is very, very nice). Just like old times.

I checked out what you've done with your editor, and I have so many ideas. I'd love to be able to create some mini-worlds for my sons to explore.